The O’Keefe Institute performs basic and applied research to develop technology, methodologies and tools that facilitate sustainable supply of strategic minerals for United States. The Institute also does science-based policy work that informs government policy on strategic minerals.

The Institute has five research thrust areas:

1. public policy development related to encouraging the recovery of critical materials from existing and new process streams
2. development of new processes to recover critical minerals as byproducts from existing processes and new sources
3. identifying new sources of critical minerals within the United States
4. life cycle-based criticality assessment of existing and new processes for critical mineral recovery
5. Sustainability assessment and environmental mitigation of potential hazards of existing and new processes
   
   

The Institute leverages state-of-the-art research facilities distributed across the Missouri S&T campus and faculty researchers from several academic departments.